


terminus

by aghamora



Series: Flaurel Ficlets [36]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e11 She Hates Us, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6090334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath of Frank's confession in 2x11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	terminus

“I killed Lila.”

Sinking. That’s all she feels – a horrible, godawful sinking feeling, as she stops in her tracks, turns to face Frank, and freezes. Her stomach sinks, and twists, and roils with nausea, coiling in her belly, rising hot in her throat. Her shoulders droop. Her arms and legs feel all at once like lead weights, sinking down toward the ground too. The world around her feels heavier, slower, right then, like  _everything’s_  sinking.

So she blinks; once, twice, three times. Holding Frank’s gaze, never looking away. Waiting, almost, for him to tell her that it’s a lie, a sick fucking joke he’s playing on her, but he doesn’t move a muscle, say a word. He just looks back at her, unflinching yet more vulnerable than she thinks she’s ever seen him, with his blue eyes widened slightly, almost childlike, and his mouth moving as if he has more he wants to say but doesn’t know how to say it.

“What?”

It’s all she can think to say. The word escapes her in one tiny, shaky breath. Part of her thinks, briefly, that maybe she’d heard him wrong. Denial. Deny. It’s the first thought that runs through her head, the impulse quick as lightning. What he said… Lila, he’d  _killed_  her… No, that can’t be right. That-

“I did it,” he repeats, and this time his voice is strained. “I killed her.”

“No,” Laurel blurts out, and drops her bag, and goes right for him where he stands in the space between the kitchenette and the living room, desperate for him to tell her he’s not serious. “N-no. No. Sam-”

“-blackmailed me,” he tells her, his composure wavering. He looks almost like he might cry, his jaw clenched tight, eyes glassy. “I didn’t… I didn’t wanna do it, okay? But what he had on me, you gotta understand-”

He reaches for her. Out of instinct she recoils, and hurt flickers in his eyes when she starts to back away from him, like an animal’s prey retreating into a corner, like she thinks he’s going to hurt her, too.

“You didn’t,” she raises her voice, almost to a hiss. “You  _didn’t_  kill her.”

A moment of silence passes. Frank doesn’t seem to know what to do: approach or back off, and so he does neither, and stays where he is, eyeing her like he’s trying to silently beckon her to understand, to let him closer. And then, finally, he chances a step towards her – and just as quickly, she moves back another. Something breaks in him, right then, when she moves away with wide, teary eyes and what she’s sure is a look of horror on her face.

Something changes. Shifts. All the air goes out of his lungs, and he deflates until he looks like a shell of the man she knows, until he’s almost unrecognizable. She’s never seen Frank cry, never even dreamed he could – but when he raises his eyes to hers there are tears in his; hard to see in the dimly lit apartment, but there.

“I did,” he says, choking on the confession as it leaves his lips.

It’s right then – looking him square in the eyes, seeing him so honest, so unguarded, with every inch of his lies laid out in the open – that the truth hits her like a kick in the gut, and she tenses. She feels dizzy, suddenly, and her chest tightens, in what feels like a panic attack careening towards her at full speed. She’d known it would be bad, whatever he had done. Very bad.  _Going to jail_  bad. Yes, she’d suspected murder; at the very least some kind of death, some blood on his hands, dead body to his name.

But she hadn’t expected this. Never this. Never  _Lila_ , not for one fucking single solitary second. That’s what had made it perfect crime, she realizes. And he the perfect criminal.

She can’t speak. Can’t summon up her voice. All she does is stand there and try not to pass out, or puke, or both. Again, desperate to comfort her, Frank moves forward.

Again, like a dance, she moves back.

“Laurel.” His voice breaks again on her name. “Laurel, you gotta understand. I – I had to. What Sam knew… I didn’t have a choice-”

“You _always_  have a choice!” she half-screeches, so rough that she hardly recognizes her own voice. “You had a choice, and you killed her, and  _that_ was your choice!”

“Calm down, Laurel, please-”

“Don’t,” she pants, as the panic hits her head on, and her knees turn to jelly. “Don’t. _Don’t_  come near me!”

“I-”

“All along it was you.” She cuts him off, her mind snapping into a state of perfect clarity for a moment. “We all thought it was Sam. We were – we were  _so sure_ , and when we killed him… when we covered it up, covered it all up, we… it was  _fine_ , because he deserved it – but now…  _Oh God_.”

“Lau-”

But she keeps going, wild-eyed like a madwoman, frantic. “So everything that’s happened, us killing Sam… Annalise said everything that’s happened started with us, and what we did, but it was you. Everything that’s happened… it was all because of  _you_.”

“It’s not-”

“You’re the reason we’re all murderers,” she spits, voice wobbling. A sob cuts her off. “The reason _I’m_  a murderer.”

For a third time, he reaches out. For a third time, she shrinks away. “Please-”

“Did you know?” she cuts him off. “About her baby? Did you know Lila was-”

She stops suddenly, shaking with fear and anger and confusion. Frank deflates just a little further, and opens his mouth, then closes it without speaking – and she has her answer, right there. _Two lives. Her baby, too. God. Oh God._

Her face crumples. “So you knew. You knew she was pregnant. And you did it anyway.”

Another silence hits them, potent and agonizing, the only sound to be heard the sound of her heavy, panicked breathing. This time, when Frank starts advancing towards her, there’s a look of determination set in his eyes, and she backs away so quickly that her leg catches on one of his chairs, and she stumbles backwards away from him, shaking her head, barking at him to  _stay back, stay back!_  like she would bark at a wild animal, but he pays no mind. Instead Frank walks toward her and takes her by the shoulders, firmly but gently, in a desperate attempt to get her to listen, even though she’s bordering on hysteria and spiraling out of control.

“Hey,” he tries to soothe her. “Hey. Laurel, calm down. Let me explain-”

“How?” she breathes, biting out the words through a sob. “ _How_ can you explain this to me? I – let me go, don’t touch me, don’t-”

He raises his voice, lowering his face to hers, trying desperately to get her to look him in the eyes. She raises her hands to his chest and tries to beat him away with them, but he catches her wrists, stilling them.

“Laurel, listen. Listen. Please, just… just listen-”

“Or what? Are you going to kill me too?”

She says the words with an air of half-hysterical composure about her. They make him go still immediately, his grip on her wrists going slack, until he lets them fall back down at her sides, and exhales shakily, and backs away, shaking his head with tears still in his eyes, as if just realizing, like her, what he’s become. Who he  _is_.

_What_ he is, and has been all along.

“H-how would you do it?” Laurel asks, sniffling and raising her chin. “Strangle me too? Wrap your hands around my neck and crush my windpipe, and squeeze the air out, and… feel me  _struggle_  and look into my eyes, and-”

“Stop!” he begs, as if imagining himself doing every word she says, and Laurel doesn’t think she’s ever seen such a look of sheer agony on someone’s face before; every word she speaks looks like it’s killing him, turning a knife in his stomach. “Stop it, Laurel. Christ, you know I’d never do that. Ever. I’d never lay a fucking finger on you. You  _gotta_  know that!”

He pauses, waiting for her to respond, to tell him that she does. But her lower lip trembles, and her face crumples again, and Laurel just sucks in an unsteady breath, shaking her head.

“I don’t know anything, anymore.”

There’s a shift in his eyes, just then. A look of surrender – of total defeat – washes over him out of nowhere, as if he realizes that there’s no point in fighting, no point in trying to make her understand what she’ll never understand. His shoulders droop, releasing their tension all at once. Again, his mouth moves without articulating any words, before finally falling shut, giving in, as if understanding, all at once, that there’s nothing he can say to fix this, to make her stay, to  _save_  them.

This is the end. Laurel watches the realization hit him, step by step, until finally he looks up and meets her eyes again, his cheeks damp with tear tracks, his eyes hollow, hopeless. He knows as well as she does that there’s nothing more to say – but no, there’s everything, fucking  _everything_  to say…

Everything, and nothing.

Slowly, breathing heavily, Laurel reaches for her purse on the floor, and walks past Frank, eyeing him closely. Part of her wants desperately to stay, to break down in his arms, and weep and scream at him for hours until she’s made herself sick, and let him hold her… but she knows she can’t.

Not after this night. Never again.  

So Laurel goes for the door, wordlessly. Frank doesn’t try to stop her, at first, as if sensing that it’s pointless, and it’s only when she reaches for the doorknob when-

“I love you.”

His voice catches, thick with tears. The words make her heart seize up inside her. She’d wanted to hear them before – desperately. She’d imagined him saying them so many times, in so many different ways, but not like this. She doesn’t want them like this, because knows as well as he does that this is his last way to ask her to stay, to beg her not to go.

And she knows as well as he does… that it’s not going to work, either.

So she takes a deep breath, and turns to face him once again. For the longest moment in the world they stand like that, only feet apart, but it feels like miles now, millions of miles. And it’s Frank looking at her – Frank, who loves her, and who she’s growing more and more certain she loves too – but it’s not  _Frank_. It’s different. _He’s_  different, this monster of a man she’d thought she’d known.

It turns out she’d never had to worry about monsters under her bed, she realizes. All along the real monster had been in her bed, sleeping right next to her. The hands that had touched her so gently had choked the air out of Lila’s throat. The eyes that had looked upon her with such adoration had watched a young girl die in cold blood. Oh God.  _God_ , she’s going to be sick, but she chokes down the bile in her throat long enough to speak up again, her voice steady and low.

“You said… you wanted me to know the real you,” she says, straight-faced, almost trance-like. “And you took me to meet your family, and charmed me, and told me you were a good guy, and… made me fall in love with you.” Hope flickers in his eyes, at that. It disappears, however, the moment she continues. “But that wasn’t the real you.”

Laurel pauses, pressing her lips into a thin, resigned line. “ _This…_  is the real you.”

She leaves, with the words still hanging heavy in the air behind her. She doesn’t let herself look back.  


End file.
